Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/170

148 Miss St. Yves, distracted with the change she perceived in her lover's countenance, pulled the woman out of the room into the passage, and threw the jewels at her feet, saying:

"Alas! these were not my seducers, as you well know; but he who gave them shall never set eyes on me again."

Her friend took them up, while Miss St. Yves added:

"He may either take them again, or give them to you. Begone, and do not make me still more odious to myself."

The ambassadress at length departed, not being able to comprehend the remorse to which she had been witness.

The beautiful Miss St. Yves, greatly oppressed and feeling a revolution in her body that almost suffocated her, was compelled to go to bed; but that she might not alarm any one she kept her pains and sufferings to herself, and under pretence of only being weary, she asked leave to take a little rest. This, however, she did not do till she had reanimated the company with consolatory and flattering expressions and cast such a kind look upon her lover as darted fire into his soul.

The supper, of which she did not partake, was in the beginning gloomy, but this gloominess was of that interesting kind which inspires reflection and useful conversation, so superior to that frivolous